Preface

This month in e-flux journal, we are pleased to present a special issue focusing on Moscow Conceptualism, guest-edited by Boris Groys in conjunction with an exhibition of the work of Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions, curated by Groys and on view at e-flux until January 6, 2012.

The essays in the issue take the works and activities of the Moscow Conceptualists—among whom Monastyrski was a central figure—as a departure point for interrogating not only the specific concerns of a small group of advanced artists working in relative obscurity in the Soviet Union of the 1970s, but also how the modest artistic practices they developed reflect the resilience and flexibility of a more general sphere of conceptualisms in the plural.

Here Moscow Conceptualism presents itself as a window onto a proliferation of conceptual art practices that exceed their purported origins in canonical European and American art history. How can we begin to account for the many artists whose work overlaps with the aims of dematerialized, idea-driven conceptual art, but without direct contact with this lineage—or even predating it entirely? The same question has been posed over ten years ago by Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver, and Rachel Weiss in their landmark Global Conceptualism exhibition at the Queens Museum in New York, in this journal by writers such as Carol Yinghua Lu, and in April 2011 in Moscow at a conference organized by Groys and the Stella Art Foundation, where the papers included in this issue of e-flux journal were first presented.

What seems key in addressing this question, as the essays in this issue suggest, is the exceptional nature of each of these conceptualisms, for, as Ekaterina Degot points out in her essay, “Moscow art of the ’70s inhabited an upside-down world, one defined by the victory of anticapitalism rather than the victory of communism, socialism, or the Soviet regime.” In this world, communist ideology had already converted objects to ideas (collective property) and citizen-subjects to (non-professional) artists, so the found object, the privileging of idea over material, and the disappearance of the artist’s hand were already indistinguishable from an ideological landscape taken for granted by the artists. Interestingly, it is in this sense that Moscow Conceptualism must be considered not only as the work of dissident artists confronting the triumphs and failures of socialism, but as a continuous line of inquiry producing radically unexpected terms for non-alienated art.

This month in e-flux journal , we are pleased to present a special issue focusing on Moscow Conceptualism, guest-edited by Boris Groys in conjunction with an exhibition of the work of Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions, curated by Groys and on view at e-flux until January 6, 2012.
The essays in the issue take the works and activities of the Moscow Conceptualists—among whom Monastyrski was a central figure—as a departure point for interrogating not only the specific concerns of a...

By way of an introduction to this issue of e-flux journal , I would like to discuss the changes in our understanding and perception of art engendered by conceptual art practices of the 1960s and 1970s, focusing not on the history of conceptual art or individual works, but rather on the ways in which the legacy of these practices remains relevant for us today.
I would argue that from today’s perspective, the biggest change that conceptualism brought about is this: after conceptualism we...

The artistic practices of the international neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s and ’70s are often understood through the notion of the rediscovery of the figure of the artist. Experimental art from that period included happenings, performances, and other body-related practices. One would expect such expressions of subjective freedom—to the extent they were legally permitted—from artists in the totalitarian Soviet Union. But while works of this kind did indeed exist (e.g., the performances of the...

Tactically, conceptualism is no doubt the strongest position of the three; for the tired nominalist can lapse into conceptualism and still allay his puritanic conscience with the reflection that he has not quite taken to eating lotus with the Platonists.
—Willard van Orman Quine 1
Philosophers often add “-ism” to a term in order to highlight a distinct approach to a fundamental question, that is, to name a philosophical doctrine. For example, when it comes to universals, The Oxford...

Conceptual Artwork as an Index Machine
Moscow Conceptualism, when historicized in the Soviet frame, should be regarded as part of a broader nonconformist anti-Soviet culture. All of the Moscow conceptualist groups functioned as collective quasi-institutions, but were nevertheless hermetic organizations that produced ironic and critical deconstructions of the languages of Soviet bureaucracy and ideology. Unfortunately, this has encouraged foreign collectors and researchers (e.g., Norton...

I recently recalled the precise moment when it first occurred to me that I would like to become an artist. I grew up in Moscow, and my father was a self-taught musician working at the circus. Circus artists work extremely hard physically: the amount of daily practice and physical exercise necessary to perform acrobatic acts or walk a tightrope is really enormous. They practice and exercise all day and perform by night—it’s nearly a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.
There was a birthday party for...

I do not complain about anything and everything pleases me despite the fact that I have never been here before and know nothing about these parts.
—Collective Actions slogan, January 26, 1977, Leningradskaia railroad, Frinsaovka station 1
In 2005–6, I experienced a coup de foudre —a lightning blast of admiration—when I discovered Collective Actions and their performances in the snow. Later I attended Boris Groys’s talk at his Total Enlightenment exhibition in Frankfurt (2008)...

The rise of participatory art since the 1990s invites us to constitute a history of this practice, ideally one that reflects the global spread of this work today. 1 In charting this history, important variants appear that challenge the dominant way of thinking about participatory art in Western Europe and North America, where this work tends to be positioned as a political, constructive, and oppositional response to the spectacle’s atomization of social relations. By contrast, the...

“The general tenor of emotional life in Moscow, thus forming a lyrical and romantic blend, still stands opposed to the dryness of officialdom,” wrote Boris Groys in his 1979 essay “Moscow Romantic Conceptualism,” delineating the state of contemporary artistic practice in the Soviet state. In the essay, Groys discusses the work of Lev Rubinstein, Ivan Chuikow, Francisco Infante, and the artist group Collective Actions ( Kollektivnye deistviya ). Founded in 1976 by Andrei Monastyrski, Georgii...

I have read e-flux’s privacy policy and agree that e-flux may send me announcements to the email address entered above and that my data will be processed for this purpose in accordance with e-flux’s privacy policy*

Next

e-flux

e-flux Architecture

art-agenda

Exhibitions at commercial galleries

Art & Education

Exhibitions, symposia and teaching positions at art schools world wide

Thank You!

Subscription pending. Your email subscription is almost complete. An email has been sent to the email address you entered. In this email is a confirmation link. Please click on this link to confirm your subscription.

Close

* This consent can be revoked at any time with effect for the future. For more information, please see our privacy policyIf you have any questions regarding data protection, please contact dataprivacy [​at​] e-flux.com